http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/monmouth-county-new-jersey-looks-to.html

Monmouth County Freeholder John D’Amico last week proposed turning the county jail over to a private operator, saying the union salaries paid to the 300 correction officers who work there are “unsustainable.”

That’s putting it mildly. And with a projected annual savings of between $4.7 million and $9.4 million, the freeholders need to look carefully at the privatization option. It may well be that corrections officers have finally priced themselves out of a job.

The two highest-paid workers in the county last year were corrections officers, who more than doubled their base pay with overtime. Dana J. Townsend and Robert B. Kornett were the beneficiaries of an out-of-control system. In 2009, both of them raked in $186,000 each — $11,000 more than Gov. Chris Christie. And each received more than $98,000 in overtime alone.

If nothing is done, the financial squeeze promises to get worse. More than 200 guards are due to receive the top-step base salaries of $89,000 or $90,500 if the union’s proposals are adopted in pending interest arbitration. Last year, 36 corrections officers made more than $130,000 in base pay and overtime, and 150 made more than $100,000.

Twenty-five jail guards made more than $40,000 in overtime alone last year, and 50 made more than $25,000 in overtime. The current union contract ensures that most of the overtime goes to senior officers, not those officers who make less and therefore would not cost the taxpayers as much.

Could the union head off privatization by negotiating salary and benefits reductions and changing the ground rules for meting out overtime? Possibly. But even that might not produce sufficient savings. The freeholders need to study the options carefully between now and the March 11 final vote and public hearing on the budget.

Union members often like to trot out the old canard that the jail pays for itself by taking in state prisoners, among others. It’s not even close. In 2009, the jail did generate some revenue, primarily from payments for housing state prison inmates and federal detainees.

However, the total jail payroll requested for this year is $31 million for salaries, $5 million for overtime and a total $47.6 million for operations. Those figures dwarf the income brought in by housing state and federal inmates, making the jail far from self-sustaining.

I’m entirely for marketizing the prison system. Just about anything that would help slow or stop the prison industrial complex… however in cases like this what’s really going to happen is that some company who has ties with government will get a deal to take over the prison. It’s not even close to a free market in arbitrartion and restitution / punishment and such corporatist systems can very easily lead to results worse than a straight government controlled setup as the incentives are in some cases even more perverse.

In times like this however there is simply no getting around these possible problems. You can only fight economic reality so long. In the end it wins. Taxpayers will have to shake off as many leeches as quickly as possible.

Read about why at JailedActivist.info.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/

In medieval English law, the crime of “high treason” included the offense of “compassing” (or imagining) “the death of our lord the king, of his lady our queen, or of their eldest son and heir.”

The equivalent practice in imperial America consists of making any comment, however flippant or implausible, that can be construed by professional paranoids in federal employ as expressing even a transient interest in harming the holy person of the President.

As American statism curdles into outright totalitarianism, it’s becoming a crime in some jurisdictions to express violent or hostile intentions toward the state’s armed enforcement agents.

Antavio Johnson of Lakeland, Florida was recently sentenced to two years in prison for a purported crime described as “corruption by threat of public servant.” His “offense” was to record a rap number (the word “song” is inapposite) entitled “Kill Me A Cop,” in which the parolee mentioned by name specific police officers with whom he quite obviously had serious grievances.

Johnson’s rap offering was posted last February on the MySpace page of Hood Certified Entertainment, a record label catering to a particular slice of the hip-hop market.

It’s never a good idea to harbor, much less express, a desire to murder another human being (the Sermon on the Mount describes this as a sin as grave as the act itself). But in a society in which freedom of speech is supposedly protected by law, this cannot be considered a crime.

Furthermore, it’s not necessary to threaten or even to criticize the police in order to find one’s self in jail facing charges of “threatening” those poor, cringing little creatures.

Elisha Strom, a 34-year-old blogger from Virgina, is currently in the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail on a charge of seeking to “coerce, intimidate, or harass” police officers by publishing the address of an undercover narcotics agent on her blog, “I HeArTE JADE.”

The title of that blog refers to the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) task force, whose personnel and activities have been subjected to whimsical mockery therein.

If convicted of the offense, which is a sixth degree felony under the recently revised state statute, Strom would face a mandatory six-month jail sentence.

Mrs. Strom became interested in the doings of the JADE Task Force because one of its members was involved in the arrest of her husband Kevin, who was found guilty  of possessing child pornography. She points out that the statute’s applicability depends on proving that the personal information she published — which is publicly available — was provided to readers with the intent to “harass” or “intimidate” a given police officer.

Dave Ridley here…inviting you to join me as I go to jail for videotaping.
I am to enter the Cheshire County jail by 5 p.m. July 6, 2009.
This is my penalty for refusing to turn my camera off in the Keene District Court lobby earlier this year.

Rather than do anything complicated I’m just thinking we gather at the jail 3:30 p.m. that day; do whatever you like that is peaceful…and I’ll look forward to seeing some of you six days later!

There could be some sort of minor caravan from Grafton to Keene since that’s where I’m departing from and there are a lot of people here for Burning Porcupine.

What: “Jail social”
Where: Cheshire County Jail 160 River Rd S, Westmoreland, NH 03467
When: 3:30 p.m. Mon, July 6.
Background and discussion:
http://nhunderground.com/forum/index.php?topic=17123.0

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

Keith Hopkins attacked Winifred Phipps, grabbing her bag and dragging her across the ground until she had to let go.

Since then she has worred about leaving her home and has to walk a different way into town because she cannot bear to be reminded of that day.

But Judge Anthony Cleary said he had to “exercise a degree of mercy” when sentencing Hopkins because he had suffered a number of traumatic events while in prison on remand.

Instead of sending him to prison, he handed him a community sentence for two years.

Mrs Phipps, of Leamington, Warks., branded the sentence a joke and slammed the judge for being too soft.

She said: “I’m very disappointed with what’s happened here.

“There are people that have had a lot harder lives than him and not done the terrible things he has.

“I was very surprised to hear he’d got away with not getting a jail sentence.

“My nerves are completely shot to pieces after what’s happened.

“I couldn’t go anywhere by myself and often have to go to the doctors for my aches and pains.

“Because it happened near there I still can’t go there alone.

“My husband Frank always comes with me and we even have to take a different route to town because I can’t bear to be reminded of that day.”

Warwick Crown Court heard Hopkins, 27, had suffered psychological problems brought on by a number of factors including an attack by others while on remand.

He also suffered childhood abuse and was haunted by the death of a friend he stabbed during the drunken and drug-fuelled argument he was convicted of manslaughter for in 2003.

Judge Cleary said: “While on remand in prison something terrified you.

“No-one would want anyone to be subjected to such terror as was clear to me in that earlier occasion.

“I do not consider you to be wicked or evil.

“It is appropriate to exercise a degree of mercy in your case.”

In a resititution based system this guy likely wouldn’t be held in prison. He would have paid off his debts to the family and friends of his victim and let go. Without further information it sounds as if it was likely prison that caused him to become a petty criminal. Prison and jail aren’t designed to reabilitate or even provide an enviroment for the criminal (or so called criminal) to pay off the debts for their crime. It’s a melting pot of some of the worst in society and they keep adding in more people, both true criminals and not, and acting as if things will get better for them. That they won’t be worse off, that we all won’t be worse off, when they get out.

Create a loser pays, restitution based system and get rid of the war on drugs and much of our criminal problems and court abuse would disappear.